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Foreign Minister Alexander Downer today rejected claims the government contradicted intelligence advice by publicly stating that the Iraq war would lessen the threat of terrorism.

The Herald today reported that several unnamed intelligence figures told Prime Minister John Howard and his senior colleagues that the conflict in Iraq would harm the war on terrorism by fanning Islamic extremism.

Mr Downer said Australia had upgraded some of its Middle Eastern travel advisories around the time of the war in Iraq as a reflection of the information it received at the time.

But he said nobody from the government had been contacted before the Herald article went to print, nor had any of the intelligence sources been named.

He said the story was part of a political campaign, describing it as a generalised spray against the government.

"Nobody has any idea what these specific claims would be and what they relate to," Mr Downer told ABC radio.

Mr Downer said the government had received an enormous amount of information and that much of it, if not all of it, had been examined by an inquiry conducted by Philip Flood.

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The Flood Inquiry cleared the government of any wrongdoing in terms of putting pressure on the intelligence community to beef up the case for going to war against Iraq.

"Where we received information about possible terrorist activity, our travel advisories were adjusted and that was made public," he said.

"Where we haven't received warnings, where we haven't received information, then no upgrade of our travel advisories has been made."

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said it was now up to Mr Howard to answer questions about the intelligence he received in advance of the decision to go to war in Iraq.

"What we need to know from John Howard today is did he receive any such reports, verbal or written, from the Australian intelligence community, warning him about an increase in al-Qaeda thereat to Australians as a consequence of the Iraq war," Mr Rudd told ABC radio.

"What we haven't had from the prime minister to date is confirmation whether or not he had received advice from his Australian intelligence officials warning that there would be an increased terrorist threat if we went to war in Iraq.